The Gap Theory, What Say You?

General Faith
1

Ever hear of the Gap theory? This is not something I necessarily subscribe to; I find it interesting. Kind of a rabbit hole, if you will. I’m curious what you think about this. There are a few versions of it, but we will stick, for now, to the main one.

Basically, it goes like this. There is a gap of unknown times between Genesis One and Genesis Two. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Stop. Now again, this is not something essential or detrimental to your salvation, nor is it something that I fully believe. I just find it interesting. Here we go. There was nothing, then God said, and there was everything. The theory goes that this is a time period when the Dinosaurs roamed, and the Angels, the first creation, walked the earth.

Now, a bigger rabbit hole calls Mars that first earth, but we will leave that aside. Then, we read this. “Thou [art] the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee [so]: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” Ezekiel 28:14

Many feel that this is God talking to Satan.

Then they say this. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” Isaiah 14:12-14

If he were trying to ascend into heaven, then he was not there. Then Jesus tells us. “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” Luke 10:18

The theory is that this is when God wiped out the world He created, including all life, aka dinosaurs, and started over with Man. Genesis 1:2. I’m running out of space, but then they use this from the King James “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Genesis 1:28

Replenish? If they were the first, then why would God tell them to “replenish” the earth? It goes on, but interested in what you think.

Peter

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Simple, Peter, Genesis provides the heading, and Genesis 2 supplies the substance.

The Gap Theory is not biblical, because it adds ideas into Genesis that aren’t actually there. The text of Genesis presents a continuous creation, starting with God creating the heavens and the earth in ~Genesis 1:1, and the phrase tohu wa-bohu (formless and void) in 1:2 describes the initial state of the earth, not a destroyed prior creation. The Hebrew grammar, context, and flow show no gap between verses, and nothing in Scripture supports a pre-Adamic world or cataclysm before God’s ordered creation. The theory comes from trying to reconcile Genesis with secular geology, not from what the Bible actually says, and it ends up undermining the plain reading of creation, Adam, and the Fall.

Gap Theory
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According to the gap theory, there’s a very long gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The world that existed during this gap was destroyed and God re-created in the six days described in Genesis. This idea fails because it lacks biblical support and puts death before sin when Scripture describes death as the consequence for sin.

Gap Theory Examined Biblically
This brief overview shows that the gap theory is not biblical. It is, in fact, a compromise of the truth of Genesis, which arose when Christian leaders tried to accommodate the millions of years claimed for fossil layers.

Hebrew Words and the Gap Theory
Many adherents of the gap theory claim that the grammar of Genesis 1:1–2 allows, and even requires, a time-gap between the events in verse 1 and the events in verse 2. Into this gap—believed by many to be billions of years—they want to place all the major geological phenomena that have shaped the world.

Variations of the Gap Theory
The “modified gap theory” or “precreation chaos gap theory,” which is the proposed “gap” between Genesis 1:2 and 1:3, is unscriptural, and ultimately unnecessary. In fact, several gap models have been proposed over the years for one reason—to add secular ideas of long ages to the Bible.

Articles About Gap Theory
What’s in the Gap?

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What’s in the Gap?
March 12, 2023 from Answers Magazine
Gap theorists insert millions of years between the first two verses of Genesis. But what really lurks in that gap?

What About the Gap & Ruin-Reconstruction Theories?

Dec. 20, 2019 from The New Answers Book 1
Because of the accepted teachings of evolution, many Christians have tried to place a gap of indeterminate time between the first two verses of Genesis 1.

Closing the Gap
June 2, 2013 from Answers Magazine
Two centuries ago in an effort to explain “prehistoric” fossils, Christian leaders introduced the idea that a gap of time is missing between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.

Mind the Gap
June 30, 2008, p. 40
The gap theory is simply compromise. It is an attempt to harmonise the facts of Scripture with the ideas of fallen men.

Also…

In Genesis 1:1, the Hebrew reads Bərēʾšît bārā ʾĕlōhîm ʾēṯ haššāmayim wəʾēṯ hāʾāreṣ, translated, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The opening word, bərēʾšît, is a feminine singular noun meaning “in the beginning,” functioning as a temporal marker that situates creation at the start of all time, not after an undefined period. The verb bārā is in the Qal perfect, third person masculine singular, and is a gnomic or constative perfect, describing a completed, definitive act. God (ʾĕlōhîm) is the singular agent of creation despite the plural form, and the objects of His action are clearly marked as the heavens (haššāmayim) and the earth (hāʾāreṣ), connected with the direct object marker ʾēṯ. This morphology shows that God alone initiates creation at the very beginning, and nothing in the Hebrew indicates a prior destroyed world; the act of creation is singular and complete.

In Genesis 1:2, the narrative continues with the earth being tohu wa-bohu, “formless and void,” and darkness over the deep. This description does not imply a previous creation was destroyed; rather, it depicts the initial state of the earth at the start of God’s ordering work. The verbs that follow, such as vā-yomer (“and He said”) in the rest of chapter one, are sequential, describing the shaping and filling of the original creation, indicating a continuous, unbroken process. Grammatically and syntactically, the text presents creation as a single, continuous act, with God bringing the heavens and the earth from nothing into a structured state. There is therefore no textual, morphological, or contextual support for the Gap Theory; it arises from reading extra-biblical speculation into the text rather than letting the Hebrew narrative speak for itself.

This is very short and condensed.

J.

3

The theory of evolution might be summed up as “Nothing existed and then it blew up and became everything which then organized itself into us”. The reason this idea has gained such traction is that Satan want people to believe there is no God.

The Gap theory is a way to sneak evolution into the bible and at least get people to question the bible if not doubt it.

Speculation can be fun, but when it turns into a doctrine with which to attack others, it is not healthy.

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like all false theories it causes God to say 5that death is good.

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Not quite sure what you mean. But thanks.

Peter

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By your leave @Who-me , any theory that includes theistic evolution (or any evolution) through mutation and natural selection suggests that God uses selection as a primary tool to advance and refine species.

“Survival of the fittest” also means death of the not-fittest. There are valid arguments on both sides of this particular issue. But there is no escaping that evolution relies on death to establish new species, refine extant species, and adjust the “fitness” of every life form on the earth, which seems unlikely from a Christian viewpoint.

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Dawkins said it, ‘ Evolution gave him an intellectual reason not to believe in God’, or words to that effect.

The bible clearly teaches that God created animal, bird, fish and plant life.

The belief in the fixity of species was as false an idea as the medieval idea that the earth did not move.

Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is the ‘ mystic’ creation of new genetic material to enable change.